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Works Progress Administration

News about Works Progress Administration, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times. More

The Works Progress Administration, launched by President Franklin Roosevelt in his third year in office, was the largest jobs initiative the United States has ever seen. It was the signature program of the New Deal -- and the most attacked and reviled by conservatives. In its eight years, from 1935 to 1943, it spent $10.5 billion employing eight and a half million Americans who previously had been jobless, rescuing them -- and the country -- from the straits of the Depression.

Unemployment had been 24.9 percent when Roosevelt took office two years earlier, in 1933. Millions were homeless and wandering the country in search of jobs. Shantytowns sat on the edges -- and often in the midst — of every city. Many people had no clothes to wear or food to eat.

The New Deal’s first relief and jobs programs were aimed at relieving suffering. But as Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins, who headed the W.P.A., looked around the country, they saw an infrastructure mired in the 19th century: unpaved roads, rickety bridges, inadequate water and sewage treatment systems or none at all, national parks and forests damaged by deforestation and erosion.
Thus, W.P.A. job programs concentrated on these projects, as well as in building airports, hospitals and schools.

When disaster struck, workers were could be mustered by the thousands to fight floods, hurricanes and forest fires. The W.P.A. also gave jobs to white-collar workers and workers in the arts. Teachers improved the adult literacy rate. Doctors and nurses vaccinated children. Actors and musicians entertained millions at plays and concerts that were often free. Writers produced landmark guides to states and cities, and visited former slaves to record their memories. Artists painted murals that today are being restored to public view. And in the last part of its life, as the shadows of war fell over the United States, the W.P.A. repaired military bases, built armories, and put its workers into training to help meet the demands of World War II.

Conservative objections to its projects centered on themes of wastefulness and inefficiency.

At its peak, signs marking W.P.A. projects appeared in virtually every town and hamlet in the country. Those signs were taken down and used for scrap to aid the war effort, just as the war itself reduced unemployment and made the W.P.A. unnecessary. But its contributions to the national legacy live on. -- Nick Taylor